Beautiful Blenheim- The Marlborough Maze

As you may have realised in my Maize maze post, I adore mazes.  I was delighted to experience a double maze experience in my week in Oxfordshire as I realised that we were near to Blenheim palace which had a famous five which I learnt about in my 'Amazing mazes' book. Blenhem is owned by the Duke of Marlborough and is famously the home of Winston Churchill. I put the maze as a day trip proposal to CBC and J and they both seemed keen.  It was, unfortunately a day of egregious British weather so we had to battle on in the rain.

 I'll tell you about the other parts of Blenheim we visited, but you can read about the maze above. I laughed at the 25 minutes to solve- it took CBC and I 10 minutes the first time and then after we went back and did it timing each other, I managed a respectable 5 minutes and CBC, 3 minutes!

 We set off together through the hedge maze.

 The route you take makes use of two bridges which helps to orientate you.

 CBC, the swine, beat me to the first.

 We could see our target from the bridge.

 There's something so exciting about an ancient hedge-maze. Authors are fascinated by them- Kate Morton, J.K Rowling, many authors use them. And forget not the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur!

 We enjoyed the different zones of the maze- there were winding paths and many dead ends!

 CBC ran ahead at some point and I lost him!

 Luckily, that black umbrella was easy to spot!

 Some people behind us muttered,"He knows where he's going!"and trotted after him. He does have an extraordinary sense of direction!

 And here was the view from the second bridge, even in the rain, we were super excited!

 And at last, we reached the centre!  Hurrah!

 From the middle, you suddenly realised that those were letters spelling Blenheim!

 How does one train as a topiary hairdresser? How often must one shear the bushes?

This was my favourite part of Blenheim but there is so much more than the maze!  Come back soon to find out what...

xx